Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville Open Thread for Saturday, June 26th, 2021.
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WLOS, Kristen Aguirre June 25th 2021
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — It was a decision more than a year in the making. After a year of protests and riots, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced Friday for murdering George Floyd.It was a decision more than a year in the making. After a year of protests and riots, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced Friday for murdering George Floyd.
Here in the mountains, the Rev. Dr. L.C. Ray was full of emotion as he stepped out of the pulpit to watch the sentencing.
"I feel today some justice,” Ray said. “I would not say complete, but some justice has been served.” Ray said watching the case play out nationally had been difficult. "It wasn’t an easy thing to watch,” he said. As a Black man and as a human being.
"Whatever our color, I think the majority of people want the right thing,” Ray said. “So, we, as people of a great nation, must continue to advertise this, preach this and share this.” And keep the legacy of Floyd alive. "Let us show the difference,” Ray said. “Let us carry out the difference by showing love for everybody.” Ray said change starts with everyone. "But most important, we must show it in ourselves," he said.
WLOS staff, June 25th 2021
FLETCHER, N.C. (WLOS) — It's three days of music, arts and hemp this weekend at the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center.
The Southern Atlantic Hemp and Arts Expo combines a diverse music lineup with a hemp business expo. Wellness luminaries, workshops, vendors and regional businesses will be celebrating the renaissance of natural healing and teaching about emergent hemp industries.
Dozens of bands and some vendors will play Friday through Sunday at the AsheJam, the music festival portion of the event.
“It’s really cool to see the way that music can bring people together. With this many bands from all across the board, everyone who attends will have something for them to enjoy,” co-producer Dustin Uhrig said in a news release. There will also be food and craft beer, along with wellness displays and workshops throughout the weekend.
WLOS Staff, Brittany Whitehead, June 25th 2021
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — "Help Asheville Bears" group is investigating a case of bear poaching in the mountains.
This week, another bear has been added to the list of bears tracked with missing limbs due to getting them caught in steel traps. This bear, now considered Number 31 on Help Asheville Bears' list, was caught in a trap in Ashe County, about 90 miles from Asheville, and HAB acquired photos from 2017 from a man's trail cam. The man, Michael Parsons, is in the process of getting more photos of the bear off his broken laptop.
Parsons contacted HAB after learning about the group this week, and the nonprofit has since forwarded the photos and information to the Poacher Strike Force. The nonprofit has formed a "Poacher Strike Force" to locate the criminals responsible for setting the traps. HAB said in a Facebook post that the trap in the photos was a #330 Conibear body type trap, which is typically used for beaver or otter.
"Its barbaric, its cruel, its lazy. It's illegal to trap bears anyway in every state except for Maine. This is poaching no matter what, and poachers ruin it for everybody," said Jody Williams, with Help Asheville Bears.
LOCAL PETITION TO STOP SALE OF BEAR TRAPS REACHES SIGNATURE MILESTONE
NUMEROUS BLACK BEARS LOSING LIMBS; HOW GROUPS ARE WORKING TO PREVENT ILLEGAL TRAPPINGS
Mountain Express, Daniel Walton, June 25, 2021
Errors were made, acknowledged Asheville City Schools Superintendent Gene Freeman, in a June 23 “update about our school nutrition department” sent to the district’s students, staff and families. In the email, he said that the N.C. Department of Public Instruction had reviewed the system’s food service operations and detected discrepancies “in the school district’s meal counting and meal claiming process.”
Findings by the state’s administrative reviewers, however, went further than Freeman’s admission, pointing to problems higher up in the district. The errors, which occurred at the Positive Opportunities to Develop Success remote learning sites, were not mere oversights by then-Director of School Nutrition Katie Treece or other ACS nutrition staff — they were the result of deliberate interference by school administrators.
“The school nutrition director was prohibited from implementing, completing and/or fulfilling various compliance requirements in the non-school programs to include the required training of non-school staff, required onsite monitoring requirements in non-school sites and clear oversight for the accuracy of reimbursable meal counts served to eligible students and children,” the NCDPI report says. “These findings, as described, constitute a serious violation of the district’s agreements with the state agency to administer the federally assisted school nutrition program(s) in Asheville City Schools.”
Local media win legal fees from Asheville after open-meetings suit
Mountain Express, Daniel Walton, June 23, 2021
The city of Asheville must pay nearly $4,200 in legal fees to a coalition of local media organizations, including Mountain Xpress, following a ruling by Buncombe County Superior Court Judge Steven Warren. Those costs were incurred earlier this year as the paper, along with the Citizen Times, Blue Ridge Public Radio, Carolina Public Press and Asheville Watchdog, sued the city over its plan to hold a March 31 Council retreat behind closed doors.
Warren had concluded on March 30 that the retreat was an official meeting of the government body and thus had to be open to the public. As the “prevailing parties” in the action, he ruled June 21, Xpress and its coalition partners are entitled to recover the entirety of their attorney fees. (In North Carolina, attorney fee awards are not automatic and depend on judicial discretion.)
“The decision to initiate litigation was not an easy one due to the formidable fiscal environment for media organizations. Nevertheless, the importance of the issue left them no choice,” Warren stated in his findings of fact.
The judge also noted that, while Xpress and other outlets had attempted to reach an agreement with the city without litigation, Asheville’s lawyers had held firm to their interpretation of the law — even after Frayda Bluestein, a professor with the UNC School of Government and open meetings expert, told them it was likely incorrect.
Raw Story. Bob Brigham, June 24, 2021
A Republican from North Carolina was ridiculed on Monday after making a hilarious blunder while attempting to lecture Democrats about facts.
Rep. Madison Cawthorne (R-NC) was homeschooled as a child and then attended a single semester of college, during which he "earned mostly D's." On Thursday, Cawthorn demonstrated his intelligence during a speech on the House floor about facts.
"It was Thomas Jefferson that said 'Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.' Let's cast our eyes over the facts, shall we," he said. The quote that Cawthorn misattributed to Jefferson is actually a famous quote by John Adams.
Here's some of what people were saying about Cawthorn and stubborn facts: (there are more)
That wasn’t Thomas Jefferson, it was John Adams. What an ignorant posturing jackweasel. https://t.co/7Yx4LwEW5t
— Charles Johnson (@Charles Johnson) 1624569939.0
Targeted News Service-Special to the Citizen Times, June 26 2021
House Vote 1: ENERGY SECURITY: The House has passed the Enhancing State Energy Security Planning and Emergency Preparedness Act (H.R. 1374), sponsored by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., to provide federal funds to state governments for developing energy security plans. A supporter, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said "the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack and other recent cyber threats to our infrastructure" showed the need to prevent and prepare for energy supply disruptions. The vote, on June 22, was 398 yeas to 21 nays. YEAS: Cawthorn R-NC (11th).
House Vote 2: VETERANS BENEFITS FRAUD: The House has passed the Preventing Crimes Against Veterans Act (H.R. 983), sponsored by Rep. Theodore Deutch, D-Fla., to establish as a federal crime the attempt to fraudulently deprive a military veteran of earned benefits. Deutch said: "This bill will give federal prosecutors the tools they need to target criminals who actively work to avoid current mail and wire fraud statutes." The vote, on June 22, was 416 yeas to 5 nays. YEAS: Cawthorn R-NC (11th).
House Vote 3: PASSING LEGISLATION: The House has passed a motion sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., to pass a set of 16 different bills without an individual vote on each bill. The vote, on June 23, was 325 yeas to 103 nays. YEAS: Cawthorn R-NC (11th).
House Vote 4: AGE DISCRIMINATION IN WORKPLACE: The House has passed the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act (H.R. 2062), sponsored by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va. The bill would change the federal government's evidentiary standard for age-based discrimination by an employer to allow mixed motive claims by a worker: that is, claims that include age as one of several motivating factors for mistreatment by the employer. Scott said the bill, by restoring an evidentiary standard overturned in court in 2009, would be a "step to ensure that older workers can achieve justice." An opponent, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said: "Allowing mixed-motive claims in cases alleging retaliation puts employers in the impossible position of trying to prove that a legitimate employment decision was not in response to a prior complaint." The vote, on June 23, was 247 yeas to 178 nays. NAYS: Cawthorn R-NC (11th).
MORE VOTES
House Vote 5: BANK LOANS
House Vote 6: SMALL BUSINESS LOANS
House Vote 7: EMPLOYER DISCRIMINATION
House Vote 8: VETERANS AND CONTRACEPTION
SENATE VOTES
Senate Vote 1: INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
Senate Vote 2: GOVERNMENT WORKFORCE
Senate Vote 3: VOTING PROCEDURES
Senate Vote 4: MARYLAND JUDGE
Senate Vote 5: CLIMATE CHANGE MARKETS
Senate Vote 6: APPEALS COURT JUDGE
WLOS, Caitlyn Penter, June 25th 2021
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — Buncombe County has moved its main vaccine operations to the Health and Human Services Building in downtown Asheville, replacing the site at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said this week that nearly every new COVID-19 death is now entirely preventable. Health officials continue to repeat that the key to stopping the spread is getting people vaccinated. Health officials said data shows the COVID-19 vaccine is keeping people out of the hospital. “I think we can safely say a majority of COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations in Buncombe County residents over the last several months have been in people who are not fully vaccinated,” said Dr. Jennifer Mullendore, medical director for Buncombe County Health and Human Services.
Although the number of new cases and hospitalizations have dropped in Buncombe County and the state, health officials said people should still get vaccinated. “We’re going to be pushing the vaccine the rest of the year and beyond,” said Fletcher Tove, Buncombe County’s emergency preparedness director.
DELTA VARIANT, LACK OF VACCINATION COULD CAUSE MINI COVID-19 RESURGENCE, DOCTOR SAYS
Thanks again, wishing you the best.